As the wisest of scholars
Have always known,
It remains stubbornly unfathomable
Just how far inspiration can take you.
So best not to risk extinguishing
Possibilities of insight,
That sometimes
Only the opportunity of reflection
And simple stasis can bring.
For it’s never quite what’s garnered
Or understood
But rather, what you feel inside,
That conditions your chances.
All the rest is no more than fool’s gold
That will choke you at your greediest.
However foolish one could ever be,
Fresh opportunities will always remain.
So what is time to even tempt you
To act in any way premature,
When late really doesn’t exist,
It is nowhere at all…
And even when you feel
You haven’t moved any closer
To where your heart truly hungers to be,
That’s precisely the time
When it’s hardest of all to see
That its desire
That often gets in the way the most.
For there are always easier,
More immediately rewarding paths
To chose, ahead of others
That genuinely hold the key.
And it’s difficult to do anything other
Than stay with the familiar,
Given all you’ve acquired
And assembled
Progressively around you.
Inevitable too that the body,
With all its innate
And transitory desires,
Will always fail
Whilst the soul never will.
Waiting patiently, as it does,
Till the frail chamber of your being
Is free at last of clutter
And the cravings of an instinct,
That so rabidly collects totems
Alluding to permanence
Falsely claimed, never quite captured.
But this is life as it truly is, my friend…
And even if you were ever
To achieve a state of being
Far beyond the dreams of avarice,
Of any mortal imagination,
It all comes to nought in the end.
So how foolishly we believe
Our lives to be empty – but not so,
Till clotted with greed and lusts
That satisfy but for a moment,
Before we inevitably ache for more.
Of course,
This is a madness of sorts.
Knowing that,
Whatever we lay claim to,
Death will always burst through in the end.
And thereby become
Every bit the monster we make it.
For what worse a curse
To wish on your enemies
Than the cravings and desires
Of self importance realised.
And, for even the enlightened ones
Amongst us, what use
The most beautiful of instruments?
If you lack the skill to play
(And like an angel too!)
But only if with the humility
Required to even begin…
From pauper to thief,
From peasant to monarch,
Such a chance is granted to us all,
Be we humble enough to see it.
So proceed generously,
Measure out a little of this
And a little of that, along the way.
And find out slowly
What it takes to make you soul sing.
If you can,
Be brave enough to never yearn
For that you cannot hold close
In your heart forever.
Tread lightly, cherish compassion
And live in the moment without fear.
To seek solace as they did.
To draw strength from the natural world,
Only for it to tighten its remorseless grip,
Till it brings you face to face
With elementary truths
That spear your insignificance
And stake it to the ground without pity,
Like a trophy,
Like the bloodied innards
Of a wounded animal,
Caught in the final dazzle of despair.
I can imagine that,
Before she left him,
They might have often sat indoors,
Hidden away from the awful truths
They had uncovered,
Watching the heat from the fire,
Cast in germ-like shadows,
Rise slowly up the wall.
All too aware
That their time together was now melting away.
Two souls emptied, hollowed out,
By the risks taken in pursuit of meaning.
And, at the window,
Diamond truth.
The hawk’s eye
That mocked them without mercy
And harried them, desolate, to their graves.
Ambition’s the thing,
For sure.
Desires irrevocably ignited
By creative resonance.
A wish to travel that same path,
To follow a tracer line
Of those that came before you,
In sporadic explosions
Of piercing self expression
And insight,
Fierce splintering beauty
Fired out into the darkness.
And even when life is as its stillest,
Most becalmed,
Their energised presence lingers
And haunts us still,
Like mysterious smoky lanterns
In the circling mists of uncertainty
They chose to explore.
Clues embedded
In swaying shadows
And curious shapes of thought
Left behind,
A stream of primal voices
Whispering in the breeze of your heart
To urge you on.
As an artist,
This is about the places
You are prepared to take your soul to.
Go in far and deep enough,
As most are too afeard to,
Then there are, of course,
Rich and fabulous seams of treasure
To mine,
Bejewelled slivers of which
You can then bring back
To the surface of life
For others to see and feel,
As if theirs.
To gaze and wonder at …
Be as bold and as brave
As you wish,
By all means look to the heavens.
But, as you labour so
In this glorious snare,
Do also take care to tend to the wounds
Of your enthusiasm.
Because it’s not till it’s broken and bust,
Genuinely beaten up,
That you realise just how fluid,
How soft and aching,
How finite a liquid chamber
Any human being is,
Given its every flush of hope
And inspiration,
Its residue of angst and despair.
The wonder, the sheer scale
Of its emotional range
And yet, as if to confound us all,
Its raw and visceral vulnerability.
Yes indeed,
What an extraordinarily delicate
And tender thing it is we have here.
For less than a moment
In our incessantly indifferent world,
One raging soul’s crazy dances
Like a drunken butterfly,
Painting the day fitfully
With its own show of colour
In search of the sun.
Anchored as you are to a destiny,
Which is not nearly so temporary
As all you experience,
It is what it is, this impulse still to act.
Knowing for sure that
Some things are more precious
Because they don’t last forever.
Sometimes, caught in the thrall,
There’s no option
But to just stand and gape in amazement
At what you can discover,
And all that has still somehow
Found its way back to you.
For here you are,
At a fixed point
On a grid of possibilities
That is the architecture
Of happiness itself.
Knowing that, at any one time,
It is only for you and you alone,
To decide to stay or move on,
To pause, or to reach out
And clasp something new
Close to your heart,
Wedded as we are, quite rightly,
To an ambition to luxuriate fully
In life’s rich promise.
And the truth is you are indeed
As wonderfully and perilously free
As this suggests.
All this and more you may taste
And explore,
With the best of intentions
And, as if none of it will leave
Even a fleck upon you!
Knowing all the while,
Of course,
This is not really
How the story runs.
Give not honestly of yourself,
And you will corrode the core
Of much that matters.
Shine true instead
And you may well linger
In the light of love,
Maybe even longer
Than you feel you have a right to.
And of course
There’s so much in between.
Muddled by prescribed faith,
Morality
And the ever shifting tolerances
Of others that will hasten to judge
Or condemn you.
No reliable arbiter of choices
Before you then,
Save your own inner voice,
Should you take care to listen.
But surely
As just one seeker
Of souls harmony,
Netted but never quite landed
In this world,
To catch even one glistening moment
Of sweet release,
As full, as fine, as pure
As ever could be hoped for,
Would be bounty sufficient to last a lifetime?
Now there’s the rub…
For me it’s easier to embrace, I guess.
Long wedded to the quest
And not just some otherwise busy
Preoccupied visitor
Indifferently passing through.
But I suppose we are all
Writers of our own lives,
Are we not?
How much better – joy laden
The story is then,
If one remains
Free enough in your spirit
To always find some time at least,
To be as a child would be.
Able to hone in, to find the pulse
Of whatever small excitements,
Opportunities otherwise easily missed,
That life still so often puts our way.
Believe me,
To catch and plant them all
Would soon fill your open heart
To bursting point,
If you were ever that artful.
For as adulthood takes hold,
Poised
And seductively accomplished
As it often may well be,
How barren is the vessel
That has no seed left within.
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